1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to mechanisms for handling and reporting errors in computer systems; and more particularly to a controller having a plurality of servers with a mechanism for handling errors occurring in the server, and reporting the errors back to the requestor of services of the controller.
2. Description of Belated Art
Large scale computer systems, such as those operating in accordance with the IBM ESA/390 architecture, include a plurality of central processing units sharing access to a mainstore. A system controller coordinates the transfer of data among the central processing unit and the mainstore. The system controller includes a plurality of servers, which independently work on a queue of requests or ports coupled to the processing units in the system, the mainstore, and other requestors in the data processing system.
When an error occurs in the system controller, the error must not only be processed for the purpose of correcting operations in the system controller, but the effect of the error must be reported back to the source of the request for service.
Thus, the error handling and reporting mechanisms in system controllers typically include a mechanism which associates an error with a specific port, and then reports the error to the requestor identified by that port. However, prior art mechanisms have been limited in the amount of information about the error that could be provided to the requestor through this mechanism.
It is desirable to provide an error handling and reporting mechanism for system controllers and other similar systems, which is enabled to take advantage of more sophisticated error analysis techniques.